Ten thousand wishes, stacked one gate at a time

I love a place built entirely out of other people's hopes, and Fushimi Inari might be the clearest example of that I've come across. The shrine itself goes back to 711, long before Kyoto was even the capital, and it was burned to the ground during a civil war in 1468, rebuilt only because donations came in from all over the country.

The famous gates lining the mountain path today are the same idea, just repeated ten thousand times. Each one is paid for and donated by a single person or business, a tradition that really took off in the Edo period, apparently on the strength of a pun, since the Japanese word for passing through sounds almost exactly like the word for a wish coming true. So every single gate you walk beneath is, technically, someone else's hope made solid.

I painted it in watercolour and ink, that endless vermilion tunnel up the mountain. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Fushimi Inari, Kyoto · Travel Poster